


The Path to Enlightenment

by ljs



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: AU, Established Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-21
Updated: 2010-09-21
Packaged: 2017-10-12 02:06:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/119595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a post-Chosen AU (established relationship), Giles and Anya find a new way to meditate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Path to Enlightenment

When the wish-catcher overhead flutters in the slow lift of heat from their furnace, Anya almost believes she could see sparks flying from the ends, snaps of air-borne gold lost almost as soon as they catch. She usually loves the look of it, but tonight it makes her uncomfortable somehow.

Almost as uncomfortable, she thinks, as lying naked on top of her and Rupert’s duvet and a couple of pillows he’s carefully arranged. Not that the nakedness or the posture is the problem, it’s just – "Honey, what are you _doing?"_

"I told you. Seeking enlightenment," he says, pausing outside the door to the bedroom. His gaze finds her, warms, then lifts like heat. "Or rather, the tools to access enlightenment."

She arches her back a little, just to make him smile. But still: "All right. Why do I have to be naked for you to look for unnamed, possibly nonexistent things?"

"You too shall be enlightened, darling." Then he disappears again.

Approximately five different cutting remarks occur to her, but she merely sighs and snuggles deeper into the pillows. She’s been worried about him all day; when they heard that an old mage-friend of his had fallen into a dark road, chosen worse than vengeance and died for it, Rupert buried himself in his study. Whenever she checked on him – casually, of course, with offers of tea or food or books or questions about a shop order, so that he didn’t suspect a thing – he was sitting in his armchair, lights low, no music, flipping over pages but not reading. When Rupert doesn’t want to read, the next apocalypse is all but hammering on the door.

But several minutes ago he emerged from gloom and the study with that strange yet pleasantly warming light in his eye, stripped her, put her on the bed, and asked her to wait. Well, fine, if it makes him happier, and if she gets sex out of the deal....

She sighs again, and curls her toes around the rungs of the foot of their bed. Iron can be cold like stone on bare feet, she thinks, and she remembers a thousand years’ worth of those, demon and human, who said they were on the road to ‘enlightenment.’ All too often it was a code word for blood and pain for others, for jagged rocks against tender skin.

She moves her feet off the iron. It’s too cold.

It surprises her how much the word bothers her still, how chill creeps up her spine, down her legs, even without direct contact. "Rupert, come on," she calls. If he were here she wouldn’t be so scared....

"Got it," he says, already inside the door. "Sorry to take so long, but I had something very specific in mind."

"Something still unspecified to _me,_ " she notes. Lifting her head, she looks at what he’s carrying – a small mesh bag from whose depths gleam gold and silver, happy glints that disappear when he moves his hand, and a ribbon-wrapped tube. It takes her a minute, but then, "Honey, why do you have the foil-covered chocolate coins and the Christmas cracker that Dawn sent us last month?"

He grins. "I need something as my focus. As do you." Already shirtless, he kicks off his tennis shoes and climbs onto the bed.

"‘Focus’?" But before she can question further, the little bag drops onto her stomach and his lips find hers, and she’s focussing indeed, on good weight and warmth, on the movement of their mouths and the fine press of the cords of the sack between his body and hers. Her legs fall open as he moves in –

And then he’s away, leaving her cold. "Right," he says in his stuffiest voice, as he picks up the coins. "My thinking is that _one_ path to enlightenment might meld spiritual and physical meditation."

"Yes, I often think chocolate is meditation. But why do I have to be –"

"Let me finish, please." His frown is mock-stern, but it has the usual arousing effect on her. She shifts on the pillows, feeling the slide of high-thread-count cotton outside, the swell of wetness inside. He says, "Stay _still_ , Anya," and puts one hand low on her just above brown curls to hold her down, uses the other hand to pour the coins into the hollow of her belly. His touch is just barely enough to keep her from wriggling in pleasure-shock at the cool kisses of confectionary tender.

Maybe she shouldn’t have put the coins in the fridge, she thinks hazily. Or maybe she should. This is a better chill.

"Now then." After unbuttoning his jeans – yep, she sees his cock wants release – he tosses the bag aside and spreads the coins out on her stomach. As he begins to slide them around: "First, I plan to create a meditation pattern for my focus. Nothing too elaborate, mind, nothing to get in the way of my concentration." A snap of a big gold coin, centered below her breasts; another on her navel. A third is placed underneath his fingers where his other hand presses down. He stops and surveys what he’s got. "Ah. Do you promise to not move?"

"For how long is my promise binding?" she says.

"My cautious love." His voice is husky, his gaze fixed on her body. "Until I say you may move. Do you trust me?" Even though he’s not looking at her, she can see sadness colouring him.

"Of course I trust you. But you’re taking a very long time about this."

"It _will_ take some time, I think. Enlightenment doesn’t come easily. It must be worked for." Yes, the shadows are creeping forward across his face – he’s still thinking about his friend, she knows, about things he can’t change. Then he says, with a visible effort: "But no enlightenment is worth anything if it hurts another, so if you’re at all hesitant–"

Her unspoken memories of blood and death wisp away. "I wasn’t saying ‘No,’ Rupert. I was saying _hurry up_."

"I’m still saying, _wait._ " Even as he speaks, he picks up her arm and arranges it so that her hand replaces his, low on her stomach.

If she extends her index finger just a bit... but no. He wants her to wait. "Okay. Enlighten me at your own extremely slow pace, honey."

"And so I shall," he says. "While you have the wish-catcher, I have to find the right pattern. Don’t have the benefit of esoteric tradition here–"

"In other words, you’re making it up."

"Yes, I’m making it up." A grin flashes bright as the gold and silver she can’t see, hiding the sadness inside, and he takes up a few of the smaller coins. Eyes down, concentrating, he places each piece on her body. High, low, left, right. Left. Righted.

The coins warm on her skin, dissipating all chill, and she feels the good swell of desire, the dissolve of bad memories. The strings of the wish-catcher above flutter in the lift of heat – she fixes her gaze on ephemeral, circling sparks. She waits. Damn it.

He moves off the bed, shucks his socks and jeans in her gilded peripheral vision. When he climbs back on, he’s so _warm –_ "Hold the pattern for me, darling," he orders, just as she’s tempted to rise to meet him.

It is an effort, truly, but she centres herself in stillness as he kneels between her legs, as he carefully lifts her spread legs over his, as he slides inside where she’s ready for him. He makes a funny little sigh when he’s gone as far as the angle will allow.

The coins are still balanced on her body, which starts to slick with their new warmth. She looks at him, and sees him gazing at the pattern he’s made, his face concentrated and quiet.

He pulls out just a little, strokes back in. Pulls out, strokes in. Her legs fall open wider, her stomach quivers under its burdens, and inside... oh inside she feels everything.

She looks up at ephemeral sparks, and he looks down at his pattern, and slowly, slowly, they rise, out, in, out, in. Focus.

When she can feel the slickness cresting out and in, she breathes, "May I touch myself?"

His half-smile only enhances his look of concentration. "Yes, but don’t let them fall."

"Wouldn’t." First touch, and she wants to _move_ , but – "Wouldn’t do that to you."

And so she is careful only to touch when he moves in, her finger brushing against them both over and over. Her eyes want to close, but she doesn’t allow that. She wants to watch too, as stroke becomes stroke, becomes him, becomes her –

Her focus shifts, and she’s gazing at his eyes. Good darkness has almost swallowed the hazel. Can dark be enlightenment, she wonders, and she pets him inside when he’s at his deepest.

Yes. She thinks, shivering, Yes.

"Darling," he whispers, and then into her hand he pushes the Christmas cracker she’s almost forgotten. "Take one end."

Silent, focussed, she wraps her finger in its ribboned end. That makes the coins shift, though. "The pattern–"

"Not broken, but changed," he says roughly, scatters the coins over the duvet, rises over her fast and hard, the waves high and low and right and left, and she comes in a burst of light.

Dimly she sees his gaze fixed on hers, even as he keeps stroking, keeps driving them higher. She is lifting, coming again, coming still –

And he says her name as he thrusts forward and shudders one last time, and the cracker snaps apart in their hands as he falls.

It is a few minutes or aeons later that he pushes himself off her – boy, they’re both really sweaty for such a slow climb, she thinks – and slides onto his side of the bed. "Oh, bloody hell," he says in a faraway voice. "The chocolate."

A few coins are stuck to him, she sees, and as if moving through water, she brushes them off. Then she chooses one of the big golden coins and digs at the crack in its covering, begins to unwrap. As gold peels away: "Do you feel enlightened, honey?"

"On a higher plane, absolutely. Fucking Nirvana."

"And not so sad?" She breaks the slightly melty chocolate in half and offers one to him.

He takes it, looks down. "Yes. You knew I was... troubled, by the news about Roderick."

"It was kind of incredibly obvious."

He pops his half of the chocolate in her mouth and watches her chew with as close concentration as he’d had during sex. Then, "I know you were troubled too, Anya. I’m sorry."

She swallows the chocolate, chases down the last bit from the corner of her mouth, shares it with him in a kiss. He feels different to her, easier, and she says, "There’s no reason to be sorry. I should be thanking you. Usually I don’t even notice when I’m troubled, I’ve got so much else going on, but with you... with you, honey, enlightenment is a good thing. The best thing."

"You believe it exists now?" he murmurs, laughing, crowding her with that big body.

"Yep. Higher plane," she murmurs, and as she unwraps another coin for them both, good darkness inside glitter, she touches her toes to a rung at the foot of their bed. It doesn’t hurt at all.

The path to enlightenment is warm, the rough way made smooth. And there’s chocolate.  



End file.
